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It's crunch time in Copenhagen. The U.N. climate change conference has only about 36 hours more to go.

Outside the frigid wind is blowing last night's snow so hard it feels like stinging sand.

Inside the conference center, presidents and prime ministers have been appealing all afternoon to each other to act. No one was more impassioned that French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who declared with pleading tones and with flailing arms:

"Failure in Copenhagen would be a catastrophe for all of us. We are the final generation to handle this.Please stop posturing."

Sarkozy outlined the route the convention should take the next 36 hours: Negotiate, agree on a political umbrella and six months from now transform it into a legal text.

Obama needs to come in here as impassioned as Sarkozy. But Obama cannot walk to the podium and just promise the world America will be a leader in fighting climate change. He has got to use this extraordinary forum to make a passionate case to the U.S. Senate. That is where a large part of the fate of an effective climate treaty lies. The entire world will be watching.

Today, in a prelude to Obama, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the U.S. would participate in raising $100 billion a year to help the world's poorest countries reduce carbon emissions. But where she really won plaudits from environmental groups was by stressing that the dough has to come with strong commitments to transparency to make sure countries are really doing what they say they're doing-- and not cooking the books in a numbers game.

However, the gritty real work and numbers-crunching is going on in the back rooms of the vast Bella Center. While no one expects a signed treaty tomorrow night,but for this conference to be successful there has to be some significant progress on key issues.

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